Two weeks after finalizing its acquisition of jewelry maker OroAmerica Inc., a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., company said Friday that it plans to lay off an unspecified number of workers at the firm's Burbank factory. The new company, Aurafin OroAmerica Inc., was formed last month when Aurafin acquired Burbank-based OroAmerica. Workers at the Burbank offices and factory were notified of the impending layoffs this week, said company Vice President Robert Whitaker.

Colgate-Palmolive Co. said Thursday that it will cut about 2,000 jobs, or 8% of its work force, and close or alter more than two dozen factories worldwide to keep profit on track. The consumer products giant said the actions will result in a one-time after-tax charge of $243 million, or $1.81 per share, in the third quarter, producing a loss. The changes will be put into effect over the next three years, and the savings should begin to be realized in 1992, it said.

For the first time in more than a decade, employment and output at the foreign-owned factories along the U.S.-Mexico border are in decline. This has prompted concerns that investment in Mexico's manufacturing sector could slow, rippling across the broader economy. After 12 years of steady growth, the output at these factories, known as maquiladoras, could slide by 3% for all of 2001, said Rolando Gonzalez Barron, president of Mexico's maquiladora trade association.

Word that Vans Inc. will close its massive manufacturing plant in Orange was more than just bad news for Sylvia Garibay. It was a family crisis. Not only will Garibay, a 17-year production line veteran, lose her job, but so will four of her sisters, each of whom has spent more than a decade in the aging and dusty factory permeated by the smell of adhesives and rubber products.

For all the shock, it is a blue-collar lament heard many times before: A once-bustling factory shuts its doors and a swarm of jobless workers hits the streets. But if each shutdown is its own tale of agony, the impending death of Alcoa's 56-year-old Vernon Works plant, near Downtown Los Angeles, is extraordinary nonetheless. Because in the dreary litany of plant shutdowns in Southern California, it appears that this one factory might have stayed open--the jobs saved and the anguish avoided.

To auto assembler Patricia Boyd, the strike that has brought General Motors' vehicle production to a virtual halt nationwide is a clear signal that workers have had enough of corporate America's cold talk of downsizing, restructuring and outsourcing. "GM ought to realize this is a wake-up call," declared Boyd, a United Auto Workers member who works at the inner-city assembly plant known here as Poletown. "The unions, especially the UAW, are not going to stand to be broken.

What does it take to get someone to leave Southern California? For several hundred laid-off employees of General Motors' closed Van Nuys assembly plant, even offers of new GM jobs in other states--along with $25,000 signing bonuses--aren't enough. Naturally, there's a catch: The laid-off auto workers are receiving full pay plus health insurance and other benefits from GM for doing nothing but biding their time.

Like a pickle jar striking a concrete floor, the news hit workers Wednesday at Ball Corp.'s glass factory with a shattering suddenness. After six decades, the Ball-InCon Glass Packaging Corp. plant here will shut down, putting 300 people out of work. The company, which took over the operation only this year, said it will close rather than spend the millions of dollars that would be needed to comply with stringent air-quality regulations.